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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28243953">Seven Pounds Eight Ounces Healthy Beautiful Perfect</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunriseseance/pseuds/sunriseseance'>sunriseseance</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I love Allison more than anything, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Postpartum Depression, This is a complex one y'all</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:00:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,057</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28243953</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunriseseance/pseuds/sunriseseance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison wanders more, not ready for the sleep to end, and takes in the breadth of nothing in which she’s draped her house. The fad of void that reflects her heart completely, or else does not at all, and to such a frightening degree she can hardly think it. What if Claire hates it here? What if Claire hates it everywhere? What if Claire has powers and Allison was right, always right to not want kids? What if the nightmares are premonitions and Reginald comes into the dark empty house and rends the child from her breast and talks about finally having a useful seventh and there’s still milk on Claire’s little lip and Allison can’t do anything can’t even breathe and the worst part is that maybe Claire is better off because at least Reginald can do something other than ache. </p><p>-------<br/>An exploration of Allison, trauma, and motherhood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Allison Hargreeves &amp; Grace Hargreeves, Claire &amp; Allison Hargreeves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Seven Pounds Eight Ounces Healthy Beautiful Perfect</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Come chat!! I'm sunriseseance on tumblr also!! This fic has been on my mind for a long time and I had to pump it out.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span> Allison’s heart aches. Other shit aches too, of course. You don’t push a (7 pound 8 ounce healthy, beautiful, perfect) baby girl out of your body across 21 fucking hours without some residual aches and pains, but her heart is the worst. If she stops pacing the mansion, little (7 pound 8 ounce healthy, beautiful, perfect) Claire will wake up, and she will want to be fed, or she will cry for some other reason, and Allison’s heart will ache worse because she knows, she knows she’s doing this all wrong. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She feels for her mother. Looking down at (7 pound 8 ounce healthy, beautiful, perfect) Claire, seeing the beginnings of her own curls on her head, her skin on her cheeks, Allison wonders if she, too, was a carbon copy. Why not? She had no father, woman of no man born, why shouldn’t she look just like the woman she never met? The woman who gave her away? Was she, too, 7 pounds 8 ounces? Healthy? Beautiful? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they were little, Allison told Mom with a capital M, not mother, the one that read to her, and comforted her nightmares, and sewed up the bullet holes that ripped through her tiny body, that she would never have kids. Didn’t want to do this to anyone. In the cold of the infirmary, needle still going through Allison’s practiced, unnumbed skin, Grace grabbed Allison’s face and told her, Allison, not all childhoods are like this. You and your siblings are special. She said it with a smile that spoke to how lucky she was supposed to think they were, and how much she didn’t. Allison still did not want children. She felt, even then, the broken glass on her tongue that ruined her completely every time she said a rumor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She loves Claire. Of course she does. The way the sunlight from the front window catches on Claire’s face, makes her squint her little eyes shut tighter, snuggle in closer, sleep that much harder? It invents a new feeling in Allison. One she can’t put into words. It makes her want to redecorate the house. Get rid of the emptiness, the white blank walls, let in color and joy and clutter. Not like the compound, not trophies of war, but trophies of love and home and whatever else she can fake so that Clare might feel that this building, this mansion, is a home. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Allison wanders more, not ready for the sleep to end, and takes in the breadth of nothing in which she’s draped her house. The fad of void that reflects her heart completely, or else does not at all, and to such a frightening degree she can hardly think it. What if Claire hates it here? What if Claire hates it everywhere? What if Claire has powers and Allison was right, always right to not want kids? What if the nightmares are premonitions and Reginald comes into the dark empty house and rends the child from her breast and talks about finally having a useful seventh and there’s still milk on Claire’s little lip and Allison can’t do anything can’t even breathe and the worst part is that maybe Claire is better off because at least Reginald can do something other than ache. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Allison is shaking, and her baby (7pounds8ounceshealthybeautifulperfect) notices. She begins to stir from the longest sleep she’s had since the hospital, which chills Allison to her core. She did this. Selfishly, uselessly, she woke her baby because her mind cannot keep away from the skeletons it keeps in its white-painted closets. Claire scrunches her perfect little nose, uses her little hand (with sharp little fingernails that Allison should really clip) to rub her little eyes and for a second, just a second, Allison allows herself to smile. Claire is not just perfect, she’s perfection incarnate. Nothing can change that, and certainly not all of Allison’s broken glass edges. She won’t let them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Claire opens her eyes and looks at Allison and all Allison can see is herself. That emptiness. She loves Claire, but God damn if Allison hasn’t done it. Claire doesn’t love her back. She made a baby she didn’t want with a fuck she didn’t even want (a fuck she never wants) and it took forty two weeks and then twenty one hours and, now, the baby doesn’t love her because why would she? Why would anyone with all the broken glass she’s choked up over the years?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The emptiness is gone from Claire quickly, with a smile that, someday, will be toothy and an uncoordinated reach for Allison’s big gold earring. Allison dodges out of the way of the big, fat cannoli baby hand and lets herself laugh a little bit. It shakes in the air, echoes through the void. She gives Claire her finger instead, and Claire grabs on happily, sticking it in her mouth and suckling. Ah, yeah, Allison should feed her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Claire’s room, unlike the rest of the house, is a soft purple. Her crib sits under the window, a mobile of the nine planets hanging over it. Patrick’s grandma gifted Allison a rocking chair to nurse in, which looks over at the window and the baby, when the baby sleeps and Allison can’t bear to look away. She’s put up all sorts of pictures of space. It feels like a home. Claire, when her eyes finally focus and she can see it, will love it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, as she sits down, bares her chest (bares her heart), Allison feels some residue of that emptiness. Claire latches on, readily, and the flood of oxytocin comes and it isn’t enough. Nothing can ever be enough for Allison. She can’t just love. She has to be loved back. She has to know it. She can feel the broken glass in her lungs and she’s going to cough it up. It’s only a matter of time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sighs. Looks down at Claire. Cards her hand through the beginning of curls. Says slowly, ever so slowly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I heard a rumor that you love me. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(Years later, after a much stupider rumor, Allison sits in the only homelike room in her entirely empty house and sobs herself half to death. She knows, too late, that she broke the dam for nothing. Stupid woman). </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I heard a rumor that you love me. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My take on the "I heard a rumor that you love me" rumor. Also, to be CRYSTAL clear, Claire does love her. So much. It was a useless rumor. Allison is suffering from PPD and it's fucking up her understanding of reality. The rumor did absolutely nothing.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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